By Francis H. Murray
Construction of a 50-bed hospital for the benefit of the eight communities in the Tensedakor Section in Kono District which started in 2019 is nearing completion. During a visit to Louma, one of the beneficiary communities, Mohamed Savage the National Coordinator of SIERRASOTA, the organization undertaking the project said the project was born out of the need to alleviate the community’s challenges in accessing health care over the years.
He said stories of how some women and children have lost their in their struggle to access the only medical facility that is a long distance away became a burden on Ms. Kumba Senesie, forcing her to start the initiative to make sure that access to health care, a globally recognized human right is accorded to residents of the beneficiary communities.
Savage said “Kumba hailed from this community, before she travelled to the US. This persistent problem of lack of a hospital or even a health post remains unaddressed and with the many other challenges they are face on a daily basis, she and other partners decided to give back to this community and its environs.”
He assured representatives of the eight communities that although the construction project had been delayed because of the outbreak of COVID-19, the hospital will be completed before the end of the year.
Bashiru Foday, the headman of Louma said the lack of a proper health facility remains “a serious threat to the life of my people”. He said every year women and children die during reproduction and as men “we were forced, as men, to advise our wives to take contraceptives out of fear that they may die during childbirth”. He said “When a woman is in labour here, almost all the women and some able-bodied men are involved to help save the lives of the mother and her baby. Last year, we lost a woman and at another time a child and this has been like the normal.”
Sia Biango, 80, when she heard about the construction of the hospital and especially with work now close to its completion, she was relieved that even after her death, she’ll have to take with her memories of the good gesture of SIERRASOTA. “I was born here and throughout my life I have always dreamt of the possibility of these villages getting a health center to reduce the suffering of the people to access medical care.
Aiah E. Joe, Sectional Youth Chairman said that because of the lack of a medical facility, they are forced to carry pregnant women as well as the sick on a locally made stretcher to the only hospital at a distance location. “We carry them on our shoulders over long distances causing us pain. This gets more serious in the rains when the roads are slippery and yet we must do everything possible to save mothers and their children”.
Louma, the village hosting the facility is situated about seven miles from the Sierra Leone-Guinea border and surrounded by other communities including Yendu, Makor, Biadu, and Njawama.
The construction project is sponsored by Sierra Leoneans in Minnesota (SIERRASOTA), a local nongovernmental organization headed by Kumba Senesie.
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